Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works eBook

She had begun to feel drowsy, and closed her eyes.
And gradually there came on her a cosey sensation,
as if she were leaning up against someone with her
head tucked in against his shoulder, as she had so
often leaned as a child against her father, coming
back from some long darkening drive in Wales or Scotland.
She seemed even to feel the wet soft Westerly air
on her face and eyelids, and to sniff the scent of
a frieze coat; to hear the jog of hoofs and the rolling
of the wheels; to feel the closing in of the darkness.
Then, so dimly and drowsily, she seemed to know that
it was not her father, but someone—­someone—­then
no more, no more at all.

IX

She was awakened by the scream of an engine, and looked
around her amazed. Her neck had fallen sideways
while she slept, and felt horridly stiff; her head
ached, and she was shivering. She saw by the
clock that it was past five. ‘If only
I could get some tea!’ she thought. ’Anyway
I won’t stay here any longer!’ When she
had washed, and rubbed some of the stiffness out of
her neck, the tea renewed her sense of adventure wonderfully.
Her train did not start for an hour; she had time
for a walk, to warm herself, and went down to the
river. There was an early haze, and all looked
a little mysterious; but people were already passing
on their way to work. She walked along, looking
at the water flowing up under the bright mist to which
the gulls gave a sort of hovering life. She went
as far as Blackfriars Bridge, and turning back, sat
down on a bench under a plane-tree, just as the sun
broke through. A little pasty woman with a pinched
yellowish face was already sitting there, so still,
and seeming to see so little, that Noel wondered of
what she could be thinking. While she watched,
the woman’s face began puckering, and tears
rolled slowly, down, trickling from pucker to pucker,
till, summoning up her courage, Noel sidled nearer,
and said:

The face puckered again, and the squeezed-out tears
ran down. ’Of course she must cry,’
thought Noel; ‘cry and cry till it feels better.’
And she stroked the shoulder of the little woman,
whose emotion was disengaging the scent of old clothes.

“The father of my baby was killed in France,
too,” she said at last. The little sad
grey eyes looked curiously round.